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Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth and

Twentieth-Century Riau

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Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora
Sari 21in(2003)
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century
77 - 108 77

Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth-

and Twentieth-Century Riau

BARBARA WATSON ANDAYA

ABSTRAK

Pentingnya wanita dalam mengkekalkan status laki-laki adalah tema umum

dalam kajian ilmiah ke atas masyarakat Bugis. Sikap ini mungkin sudah
tertanam dalam budaya yang dibawa orang hijrahan Bugis ke dunia Melayu
pada penghujung abad ke-17 dan 18. Di Kepulauan Riau, yang menjadi pusat
pengaruh Bugis dalam kerajaan Johor dan Alam Melayu yang luas itu, kahwin
campur antara Bugis dengan Melayu bermakna imperatif jantina telah menjadi
lemah sedikit. Namun, pengaruh wanita daripada keturunan Bugis-Melayu
tetap ketara di kalangan mereka yang berkuasa di Riau pada awal abad ke-
19. Sepanjang tempoh itu, perumusan baru tentang status jantina mulai me-
resapi masyarakat Islam melalui ajaran reformis dan fundamentalis daripada
kumpulan Wahabi. Pengaruh ajaran mereka, yang telah memperkukuhkan
kesamaran jantina yang sedia ada tentang kemunculan wanita di khalayak
umum, ketara dalam Tuhfat- al-Nafis, yang mengisahkan sejarah disaspora
yang ditulis sarjana agung Raja Ali Haji. Pada akhir kurun itu, tempat wanita
yang berturunan bangsawan di Riau sudah menjadi kurang dominan
berbanding dengan yang ada pada seratus tahun yang lalu. Namun, dengan
mengkaji karya sastera dan sejarah, dikemukakan hujah dalam rencana ini
bahawa persekitaran yang terwujud di Pulau Penyengat masih membuka ruang
kepada wanita untuk menulis. Pendekatan sinkronik kepada penerbitan
mereka itu telah membolehkan kita melihat bagaimana persoalan yang mereka
kemukakan itu sudah berubah selaras dengan perubahan masa dan isu baru
yang dibawa pengaruh Barat dan ide tentang ‘pemodenan’ di dunia Islam.

ABSTRACT

The importance of women in maintaining male status is a common theme in

academic studies of Bugis society. Presumably, these attitudes would have
been embedded in the culture that Bugis migrants brought to the Malay world
in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the island of Riau, which
became the center for Bugis influence in the kingdom of Johor and the larger
Malay world, intermarriage between Bugis and Malays meant these gender
imperatives were somewhat diluted. Nonetheless, the influence of women of
Bugis-Malay descent was still evident in Riau’s ruling circles in the early
nineteenth century. During this period, however, new formulations of gender
78 Sari 21

status began to penetrate Islamic society through the reformist and more fun-
damentalist teachings of the Wahabi. The influence of these teachings, which
strengthened existing ambiguity towards the presence of women in public life,
are evident in the Tuhfat al-Nafis, the history of the Bugis diaspora written by
the great scholar Raja Ali Haji. By the end of the century, the place of well-born
women in Riau is less prominent than a hundred years earlier. However, by
examining literary and historical sources, this article argues that the environ-
ment created on Pulau Penyengat still allowed women a space in which they
could write. A synchronic approach to their publications permits us to see how
the kinds of questions their works address shifted according to changing times
and the new issues raised by Western influence and ideas about ‘modernity’ in
the Muslim world.

INTRODUCTION

The importance of women in maintaining male status is a common theme in

academic studies of Bugis society (Millar 1983; Errington 1989; Pelras 1996), but
the passage of these attitudes and values into the diaspora has yet to become a
topic of academic research. Although the significance of the ‘early modern’
Bugis dispersal into the Malay world has long been recognized, the extent to
which ethnicity played off against gender as migrants intermarried with locals
remains a matter for supposition. In terms of male-female relations, there were
additional factors at play, for by the early nineteenth century, inspired by reform-
ist movements in the Middle East, pious Malays were increasingly bemoaning
the moral decay and religious aberration they saw in contemporary Muslim
society. A new attention to gender distinctions was evident in a growing insis-
tence that the sexes should be strictly separated, that Muslim women should
confine their activities to the domestic environment, and that they should be
veiled in public. Focusing on the kingdom of Riau-Lingga, this article examines
the ways in which these varying influences affected the position of women in
elite Bugis-Malay circles. In the process, it argues that the Bugis legacy of
female self-confidence did not disappear, but was redirected in ways that can be
tracked into the twentieth century. While the ability of women to wield direct
influence in the political realm was limited, especially as colonial control in-
creased, they were able to participate in the male-dominated world of writing and
publishing. Admittedly their voices were never loud, but the literary heritage
opens a tiny window on the manner in which some women of mixed Malay-Bugis
descent were viewing the changing world of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 79

WOMEN IN THE BUGIS DIASPORA

‘Femaleness’ in Bugis cultural traditions has many manifestations, from formi-

dable godrulers (tomanurung = “s/he who descended” and totompo = “s/he
who ascended”) to ritually potent spirit mediums (bissu) and legendary queens.
Such figures, of course, can be found in the mythological world of many societ-
ies, although they are rarely if ever commensurate with the reality of female life
experiences. What is intriguing about the Bugis case is that a succession of
observers have been struck by the relatively egalitarian position of women,
even within the region known as ‘Southeast Asia’, where the high status of
females has long been touted as a distinctive feature. John Crawfurd (1783-
1868), a man with many years of experience in the Malay-Indonesian Archi-
pelago, remarked that Bugis women ‘are consulted by the men on all public
affairs, at public festivals women appear among the men’, while Ida Pfeiffer
(1797-1858), one of the ‘intrepid lady travelers’ of the period also commented
that ‘women in Celebes [Sulawesi] have equal rights with men (Crawfurd 1971:
74; Pfeiffer 1856: 27). However, it was at the elite level that the prominence of
women was most marked. ‘Those [women] in authority’, said Crawfurd, ‘sit in
their councils when affairs of state are discussed, possessing, it is often alleged,
even more that their due share in the deliberations (Crawfurd 1971: 74; Raffles
1965 II: appendix IX F, clxxxv). In the nineteenth century there were still several
queens ruling in Bugis states, long after they had disappeared from other parts
of the Muslim world. In describing the small Bugis state of Wajo, James Brooke
(1803-1868), the ‘White Rajah’ of Sarawak, noted that all state offices, ‘including
even that of aru matoah (lawmakers) are open to women’. At that time, he said,
four of the six great chiefs of Wajo were female and ‘these ladies appear in public
like the men; ride, rule and visit even foreigners, without the knowledge or
consent of their husbands (Brooke 1848: 75). Ida Pfeiffer (1856: 267-77) was
herself entertained by several Bugis queens.
The necessity for high-ranking women to marry a man of appropriate status
meant that an unwed princess was by no means uncommon in Sulawesi. None-
theless, the Bugis woman as partner to her husband, especially in a royal mar-
riage, is well exemplified in the life of Daeng Telele, principal wife of the great
Bugis leader Arung Palakka (1635?-1696). Dutch East India Company (VOC)
sources record the numerous occasions when she mediated between her hus-
band and Company officials, and her contribution to the successful Bugis-VOC
alliance that assured the supremacy of Bone in south Sulawesi well into the
eighteenth century. In particular, she acted as a mediator who helped to explain
to the Dutch why on some occasions her husband may have felt embarrassment
or annoyance, in effect alerting them to the consequences of male siri (sense of
honor and shame) of which historians and anthropologists have written so
much (L. Andaya 1981: 15-17; Pelras 1996: 206-7). Alternatively chiding, per-
suading, castigating and applauding, Daeng Telele appears as the epitome of
80 Sari 21

the strong, confident Bugis woman, an appropriate helpmate for her husband
while deserving of respect in her own right. The details of Arung Palakka’s will
testify to his recognition of the loyalty and support she had rendered for so
many years (L. Andaya 1981: 160-1, 203, 300).
Presumably, entrenched ideas about appropriate relationships between men
and women would have been embedded in the cultural baggage that Bugis
migrants brought to the Malay world in the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. However, the kind of sources available to us means that it is difficult
to see how the Bugis who left Sulawesi following the dislocations of this period
would have reconstructed gender in their new environments, especially in their
marriages with non-Bugis women. Sometimes the adjustments were apparently
easy. In the early eighteenth century, for instance, one of the ‘five brothers’,
Upu Daeng Manambun, married Puteri Kesumba, daughter of the ruler of Matan
and Sukadana in west Borneo. He was able to attract a following among Dayak
groups because his bride’s mother, Puteri Emas Indarawati, was the daughter of
the local chief of the district of Sanggau. When this chief died, Upu Daeng
Menambun, his wife Puteri Kesumba, and her mother Puteri Emas Inderwati
ruled Sanggau jointly (Veth 1854-56 I: 241-2). Yet while this type of arrangement
would not have been at all problematic in Bugis understandings of female inher-
itance rights, there are suggestions that unions between migrants and local
women, usually negotiated for political reasons, were not without problems.
Furthermore, these problems were often related to different perceptions of ap-
propriate behavior for the wife of a well-born man. A Malay account of Kutai, on
the east coast of Borneo, provides an intriguing instance of the cultural misun-
derstandings that at times occurred. The leader of a band of Bugis migrants,
entitled the Pua Adu, chose a Kutai wife from a family descended from war
captives (orang nyang). This particular descent line played a central role in the
traditional ritual known as ‘erau bertijak tanah’, held when a prince of the ruling
house touched the ground for the first time. The ceremony required that the
infant must first tread on the head of a member of this family, and then in succes-
sion on the head of a slain individual, a living buffalo, a dead buffalo, and finally
on a piece of iron. Only then could the child set his foot on the earth. The Kutai
ruler unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Pua Adu to change his mind because,
he said, it could happen that his chosen bride might be required to fulfil this
ceremonial role. It came to pass as the ruler had feared; a prince was born, the
erau bertijak tanah was to be carried out, and the Pua Adu’s wife was sum-
moned to fulfil the ritual role that symbolized subservience. However, although
the ceremony was duly performed, the Pua Adu felt great shame (malu; Bugis
siri’) because ‘his wife’s head had been used in the tijak tanah’. Consequently
he and his entire family left Kutai and went to Sulu, where he swore his undying
loyalty to the ruler in return for help to avenge his shame (Tromp 1887: 170-4).
Given Bugis cultural norms, it would have been impossible for Pua Adu to
free himself from a sense of dishonor following a ritual which served as a public
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 81

reminder that he had married a woman descended from captives. Again, the
subsequent attack on Kutai which he engineered is completely explicable in the
Bugis cultural context. This is not to imply, of course, that the dishonor of high
born women was of no consequence in other societies; indeed, Malay history is
replete with cases of men who have gone to battle because of some real or
imagined slight to their womenfolk. Bugis men, however, seem to have felt such
insults especially keenly. In 1769, for instance, the Bugis ruler of Selangor, Sul-
tan Salehuddin (the son of the famed Daeng Cellak, one of the ‘five brothers’
associated with eighteenth-century Bugis migration) declared war on Kedah
because he felt his daughter had been badly treated by the Sultan’s son.1 Eight
years later the ruler of Perak, founding himself in a similar position, took no such
action. Admittedly he was in a much weaker position militarily, but nonetheless
one is struck by his anxiety to avoid any confrontation with his Bugis neighbors
in Selangor, even though his niece had been grossly insulted when her hus-
band, Sultan Salehuddin, had secretly married another high-ranking Perak woman
(B. W. Andaya 1979: 332-3).
The transmission of Bugis attitudes towards gender is of historical interest
because the migration out of Sulawesi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries was by no means a male phenomenon, since women and children often
accompanied their menfolk. As I have suggested, it is possible to identify the
passage of ‘masculine’ Bugis values into the diaspora, especially since they
were very similar to male attitudes in the receiving cultures. However, it is not
nearly so easy to locate examples of the stereotypical ‘strong Bugis woman’.
This is somewhat surprising, since one might have assumed they would be quite
visible in the western archipelago, where Islamic views that women should not
assume an overtly public role had been particularly influential. Historians are
familiar with the case of Aceh, where female succession over four reigns ended
in 1699, reportedly after the arrival of a fatwa from Mecca decreeing that rule by
women was against the law of Allah (Annals of Acheen 1850: 599). A similar
pattern can be tracked in neighboring Malay states, and in the eighteenth cen-
tury there are no counterparts to the queens who governed Jambi and Patani a
hundred years earlier. Sources from several Malay areas indicate that during the
eighteenth century pressure for a stricter observance of Islam was noticeable in
other activities where women were prominent, such as the propitiation of spirits
(Drewes 1976: 267-92). Yet in the Malay world we find no overt female opposition
to more fundamentalist tendencies like that found in Bone in 1640, when the
ruler’s mother Datu Pattiro We Tenrisoloreng led the nobles in a revolt against
her son’s efforts to ‘purify’ local Islamic practices (L. Andaya 1981: 142-3).
Against this background, it is intriguing to identify the way in which a
lowborn Bugis women was able to attain a position of real power because of her
hold over the ruler of Jambi. At the very time Daeng Telele was attracting VOC
attention in Sulawesi, the heir to the Jambi throne, Pangeran Anum, had become
infatuated with a former Bugis slave, To Ayo. She wielded such influence over
82 Sari 21

him that he would not give her up, even though a diplomatic marriage had been
arranged with a daughter of the Palembang ruler. Against all the dictates of
custom, To Ayo was accorded a public place in court ceremonies, and Pangeran
Anum refused to leave her to live with his official wife in Palembang. A divorce
was the inevitable result. To Ayo herself emerged unscathed, the more surpris-
ing since her husband (installed as Sultan Ingalaga in 1679) had taken two high-
born Makassar women as wives, the first being no less that Kraeng Fatimah, the
daughter of Sultan Hasanuddin, the former ruler of Goa. Despite clear signs of
tension (Kraeng Fatimah at one time referred to her as a ‘Bugis whore’), To Ayo
was able to reach a working relationship with her co-wives. With her title of Ratu
Mas Dipati now raised to Ratu Mas Sultan, this former slave formed part of a
female triumvirate that virtually governed Jambi, and controlled most of its com-
merce. Their flouting of the VOC pepper monopoly was so blatant that one article
of the 1683 treaty even attempt to exclude them from participation altogether (B.
W. Andaya 1993: 103-4, 129).
One of the difficulties in tracking ‘Bugis women’ in the diaspora is the
nature of the available sources. Histories of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago
rely heavily on VOC records, but we must remember that they are essentially
guides for effective commerce, and be grateful for the insights they provide on
political and social histories. Relationships between men and women usually
enter this material tangentially, and only recently have historians begun to ap-
proach the documents with gender in mind. The different concerns of indig-
enous material would seem to offer a promising terrain, but here too there are
historiographical problems. Beyond question the most important source for any
investigation of the Bugis diaspora in the eighteenth century is the Tuhfat al-
Nafis (The Precious Gift), apparently conceived by the Bugis scholar Raja Ahmad
ibn Raja Haji, but largely written by his learned son Raja Ali Haji (1809-1872). As
a grandson of the Bugis hero Raja Haji (regarded in his own lifetime as a living
saint) and a proud defender of the Bugis heritage, Raja Ali Haji’s avowed goal
was to set out ‘the narrative of the Malay and Bugis kings and of all their
children’. Yet although marriage relationships provide the anchoring subtext in
a narrative framed by genealogy, women who can be compared to Dato Pattiro,
Daeng Telele or To Ayo are curiously absent. Even the daughters of the ‘five
brothers’ celebrated in the text remain shadowy figures. For instance, we are told
little of Daing Khadijah, whose father was Upu Daeng Parani, the eldest of the
brothers. We know she was born in Siantan, where there was a sizeable Bugis
community, but the name of her mother is not given. Raja Ali Haji evidently knew
little of her subsequent life except that she married Raja Alam of Siak, and that
her grandson eventually became ruler of Siak (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 28, 46, 87, 166,
342, 346, 353). In fact, one of the most formidable women in the early pages of the
Tuhfat al-Nafis is the Malay princess Tengku Tengah, daughter of Sultan Abdul
Jalil of Johor (1699-1721). Initially betrothed to the Minangkabau prince Raja
Kecil, she had been rejected in favor of her younger sister, Tengku Kamariah.
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 83

The insult was much resented but, as Raja Ali Haji points out, Sultan Sulaiman
could do nothing because Raja Kecik had defeated him in battle. Raja Ali Haji
then describes how Tengku Tengah and her brother, Raja Sulaiman, decide to
approach Upu Daeng Parani with a marriage proposal. In referencing his major
source, the so-called Siak Chronicle, Raja Ali Haji notes that the initiative came
from Tengku Tengah herself, and that her goal was not merely to avenge the
defeat of Johor, but also to assuage her own humiliation (tolong lepaskan malu
aku) (Tengku Said 1992: 128).
Then (i.e. she and her brother Sultan Sulaiman) invited the Upus to dine, and afterwards
Tengku Tengah stood at the entrance to the guest’s gallery, opened the screen and threw
down her ear stud, saying, ‘O Bugis princes, if you are truly brave, avenge my shame and
that of our family (tutuplah kemaluan hamba ini anak-beranak saudara-bersaudara …
beta semua) When that is done, I shall willingly be your slave, and even if you ordered me
to cook your rice, I would do it’. When Upu Daeng Parani heard her words, he replied,
‘Allah willing, I will do my utmost to help, and I will avenge your shame and that of every
single member of your family (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 49-50; Matheson Hooker 1989: 191).
At first glance it might appear as though Tengku Tengah, a Malay princess,
is acting completely in accordance with Bugis expectations and the expected
response to feelings of shame (siri). She had been humiliated, and demanded
revenge; indeed, the text goes on to remark that she was married to Upu Daeng
Parani ‘and they loved each other, as is customary between husband and wife.’
But Tengku Tengah is impatient to exact revenge, and after Upu Dang Parani
leaves for Siantan, she takes independent action. One day, when Raja Kecik is
performing the obligatory prayers, she enters his palace and abducts Tengku
Kamariah. Tengku Tengah’s refusal to return her sister results in a fresh out-
break of hostilities between Johor and the Minangkabau, and ultimately Raja
Kecil even sends an emissary to kill Sultan Abdul Jalil. In her last appearance in
the Tuhfat, Tengku Tengah is depicted as a vengeful Fury, seizing a sword in her
hand and ‘hacking’ (tetaknya) at the remaining Minangkabau, who leap into the
sea for fear of Raja Kecil’s anger. Yet despite his general antipathy towards the
Minangkabau, Raja Ali Haji obviously believed that Tengku Tengah acted quite
improperly and had completely failed to anticipate the political effects of her
actions. Beneath his judgmental comments is the implication that problems are
only to be expected when females are given too much authority: ‘The reader
knows what women will do; when they are angry or full of hatred they act in an
improper manner, heedless of the consequences.2

ISLAMIC REFORMISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY RIAU

On the simplest level, Raja Ali Haji’s disapproving remarks about Tengku Tengah,
and the relative absence of ‘strong’ Bugis women in the Tuhfat account of the
eighteenth century can be read in terms of the environment in which he wrote. A
84 Sari 21

fundamental influence on Raja Ali Haji’s own perception of the world was global
Islam’s increasing stress on greater adherence to the fundamentals of the faith
together with a growing antipathy to the accretions that often characterized
Islamic praxis. Calls for a purification of the faith were nothing new in Malay
Islam, but in the second half of the eighteenth century reformism was given a
fresh impetus by events in Arabia, where Wahabism had generated a powerful
new force. Strongly critical of the moral decay and corruption of Islamic ideals he
saw all around him, the teachings of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab (1703-87)
provided the religious inspiration behind an Islamic movement that sought to
take over direction of the Arab state. In so doing, his followers believed, they
would be able to rejuvenate Islamic society through a return to the pristine faith
based on the guidance of unquestioned religious authorities. They particularly
inveighed against ‘unlawful commerce with women’, the ‘infamous lust’ and the
debauchery of which unreformed Muslims were accused (Burckhardt 1831: 111).
The Wahabi took Mecca in 1803, and immediately set about putting their poli-
cies into practice, most dramatically in relation to the mausoleums erected over
the graves of revered Muslims and the ‘idolatrous’ offering of prayers at such
sites (Burckhardt 1831: 200). ‘At Mekka’, reported a British traveler who was
actually in Arabia at the time, ‘not a single cupola was suffered to remain over
the tomb of any renowned Arab; those even covering the birth place of
Mohammed, and of his grandsons, Hassan and Hoseyn, and of his uncle Abou
Táleb, and his wife Khadydje, were all broken down (Burckhardt 1831: 109). Any
neglect of religious duties was severely punished; at prayer times, it was said,
guards armed with large sticks patrolled the streets to force people into the
mosque. Those who omitted to observe the daily prayers were punished, and
the wearing of silk and gold ornaments was strictly prohibited (Burckhardt 1831:
144).
The repercussions of these developments were soon felt in the Malay world.
Historical attention has focussed on Minangkabau, but the Padri preoccupation
with reform was by no means unique (Dobbin 1983). Riau, which had become a
center of Bugis influence,3 had long been known as a magnet to Islamic scholars,
but in the late eighteenth century links with the Middle East were tightening. To
a considerable extent, this can be traced to more frequent travel between the
archipelago and the Islamic heartlands. For instance, news of the Wahabi cap-
ture of Mecca and Medina would have spread quickly by word of mouth, but
Bugis and Makassar diaries recording eyewitness accounts were also being
translated into Malay (Ricklefs & Voorhoeve 1977: 109). The expanding pres-
ence of Arab teachers and the influence of local scholars who had been edu-
cated in the great Islamic centers of the Middle East was also a contributing
factor. We know that Raja Ali Haji and his father Raja Ahmad Haji made the
pilgrimage in 1828 (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 248-51), and in the cosmopolitan environ-
ment of Jeddah and Mecca they would have been brought into contact with
other Muslims who were virulently anti-European. Many of the Wahabi had
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 85

rallied to the call of jihad when the French invaded Egypt in 1798, and the large
Indian community helped to fuel resentment against the advance of ‘the Kafir in
India’ (Burkhardt 1968: 207-9).
In the late eighteenth century the expanding European presence in the
Malay world also infused the periodic exhortations for Muslim unity with a new
urgency. Raja Haji, Raja Ali Haji’s grandfather, was linked by marriage to the
royal house of Jambi, and given his anti-Dutch stance it is quite possible that he
had been influential in encouraging an assault on the VOC post some years
earlier (B. W. Andaya 1993: 174-6). In the Tuhfat al-Nafis his attack on the Dutch
in 1784 is depicted as a holy war, and he himself as a martyr, who dies in battle
symbolically holding both a dagger and a book of prayers (Raja Ali Haji 1982:
174-5). At the time of this campaign, Raja Haji was closely associated with a
certain Arab ‘priest’, the Tuan Besar, who made a special trip to Palembang to
inform the ruler that the VOC Melaka’s Welvaren had exploded with hundreds of
men aboard. This catastrophe forced the Dutch to abandon their counter attack
on Riau in January 1784, and to many Malays and Bugis would have seemed like
a direct message from Heaven (B. W. Andaya & Ishii 1992: 558-9; Vos 1993: 150-1).
The events of the following years, however, virtually ensured that Riau
would never regain its former glory. The successful Dutch return in 1787, the
relegation to the status of vassal (leenrijk), the imposition of tariffs, and the
founding of Singapore in 1819 all meant that this once flourishing port was
condemned to become a commercial backwater. More particularly, there were
continuing tensions regarding the sharing of power between Malays and Bugis,
and further quarrels between locally-born Bugis and new arrivals that at times
escalated into physical conflict. In this climate, a more self-conscious Islamic
piety seemed to offer a special solace, drawing inspiration from events in the
Muslim heartlands. According to the Tuhfat al-Nafis, Sultan Abd al-Rahman
(1812-31) dressed in ‘the Arab manner’, and enjoyed the company of ‘Lord
Sayids and Lord Sheikhs’, even himself acting as muezzin to call people to
prayers. The son of Raja Haji, Yamtuan Muda Raja Jaafar (1805-31) was if any-
thing more concerned with Islamic scholarship, sponsoring visiting scholars,
and encouraging greater understanding of Muslim law (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 220-
1). His son Raja Ali (d. 1857), who succeeded as Yamtuan Muda in 1845, was also
a patron to learned Muslims, and himself presided over religious discussions
and the reading of religious books. Raja Ali was particularly concerned with
social reform in accordance with stricter interpretations of Islamic law. He or-
dered women to be veiled, for instance, and forbade activities that ‘led to loose
behavior between men and women, and those who sang and crooned pantun
with veiled invitations to adultery. On occasion he sent people to confiscate the
lutes played by those who were serenading near the homes of decent folk’.
Observation of the obligatory prayers was enforced, and like the Wahabi in
Mecca Raja Ali even instituted a dawn watch to ensure that people rose for the
morning prayer (Burckhardt 1831: 146-7). It also seems that the tarikat or Islamic
86 Sari 21

brotherhoods operating under royal sponsorship were unwilling to tolerate what

were seen as deviation from acceptable Islamic practices. In Mecca, it had been
said, Wahabi could be easily identified because they banned the silk garments
so popular among elite Arabs, and on Riau too silk clothing and gold ornaments
were forbidden together with unacceptable customs like cockfighting and gam-
bling (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 282-5).
The same trend continued under Raja Ali’s brother, Raja Haji Abdullah, who
had gone to Mecca for a year’s study in 1841 (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 297-8). He died
in 1858 after only twelve months as Yamtuan Muda, but his influence was far-
reaching, since for many years he had been Marshid or director of the popular
Naksyahbandiyyah tarikat which is said to have been more ‘sharia minded’
than other brotherhoods. According to another source, the next Yamtuan Muda,
Raja Muhammad Yusuf ibn Raja Ali (1858-99), had also spent time in Mecca,
where he had sought initiation into the Naksyahbandiyyah order (Gordon 1999:
4, fn. 10; Bruinessen 1990: 161-2, 173).4 In a significant conjunction of dates, the
installation of Raja Haji Abdullah in 1857 and Raja Muhammad Yusuf in 1858
coincided with moves to depose the ‘Malay’ Sultan Mahmud (who was also of
partial Bugis descent), primarily because his lifestyle was so oppose to that
favored by the ‘Bugis’ cohort associated with the Yamtuan Muda’s office. Among
the many charges leveled against the most telling were those related to immoral
behavior and sexual misconduct (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 289-94).
As an acknowledged Islamic scholar, the Raja Ali Haji had been a formative
influence in the thinking of all these princes, and the Tuhfat details their religious
policies with obvious approval (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 49-50, 274; B. W. Andaya &
Matheson 1979: 108-28). It would be relatively easy to invoke the more ‘sharia-
minded’ atmosphere of nineteenth-century Riau to explain Raja Ali Haji’s depic-
tion of two other prominent women with whom he was closely associated. The
first of these was his aunt Raja Hamidah (better known as Engku Puteri) whose
mother was the daughter of the third Bugis Yamtuan Muda Daeng Kemboja
(1745-77) and whose father was the fourth Yamtuan Muda, the famed Raja Haji
(1777-84). She was also the sister of the fifth Yamtuan Muda, Raja Ali (1784-1805)
and of the writer and scholar Raja Ahmad (Raja Ali Haji’s father).
The Tuhfat’s treatment of Engku Puteri certainly makes it clear that she is a
person of substance. Although we learn nothing of her childhood on Riau, we
are told that in 1784 after her father’s death she and her sister went to Mempawah
and Sukadana with her relative Yamtuan Muda Raja Ali to escape the Dutch
attack (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 179). Later, following their return to Riau, she married
Sultan Mahmud (whose mother was half Bugis) as his fourth wife (Raja Ali Haji
1982: 179). It was during this period that Sultan Mahmud developed the island of
Penyengat in the Riau harbor as the seat of government, constructing a mosque,
a palace, a balai, and fortifications. Presumably as a means of resolving the
fractious disputes between Bugis and Malay, a formal ceremony was held on 13
February 1804, giving Penyengat to Raja Hamidah and her descendants in per-
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 87

petuity. The ‘Malay’ side was to be given the island of Lingga, together with the
revenues associated with it (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 212; Virginia Matheson 1989:
153-72). Following the death of Yamtuan Muda Ali, Raja Hamidah’s brother Raja
Jaafar, then in Kelang, arrived to take up the position of Yamtuan Muda and
make his residence on Penyengat. Another brother, Raja Ahmad, the scholar
and writer, also returned (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 215, 383). It is said that both princes
built residences near Engku Puteri (Matheson Hooker 1989: 156).5 Within the
Tuhfat, Engku Puteri’s influence in the Bugis community is made evident as she
fulfills the traditional ‘female’ role of intervening to reconcile two warring sides
in a conflict between locally born and migrant Bugis (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 222).
The only discordant chord occurs in the episode recounting the installation of
her stepson Raja Husain as Sultan of Singapore in 1819, when it is implied that
Engku Puteri’s male relatives, including her brother Raja Ahmad, forcibly pre-
vented her from leaving Riau (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 230-1). This passing mention of
family disharmony, however, is more than balanced by the Tuhfat’s repeated
references to the close and supportive relationship between Engku Puteri and
her kinsmen. For example, she takes responsibility for the care of Raja Ahmad
when he returns home ill after a visit to Batavia; she personally farewells him and
Raja Ali Haji when they leave for the pilgrimage and is among those who wel-
come them on their return (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 247, 259-60); she makes the journey
to Lingga to be with her brother Yamtuan Muda Raja Jaafar who has fallen ill.
Engku Puteri’s counsel is clearly valued in government, for she is included in
high level conferences with the Resident of Riau about matters such as the
installation of a new Yamtuan Muda (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 260). Appropriately, her
death occurs about a month after that of Raja Jaafar, and is recorded in the Tuhfat
as 28 Rajab 1260 (5 August 1844). “Her brother Engku Haji Ahmad and his family
buried her in her Fort and a vault was made”.6
Engku Puteri is thus represented as the quintessential matriarch, wise, sup-
portive, and beloved by her family. In many respects, this judgment was en-
dorsed by the Europeans who made her acquaintance. Nonetheless, while con-
firming her influential position, the perspective of European sources is rather
different from that of the Tuhfat al-Nafis. Some of the more interesting comments
come from Peter J. Begbie, an Indian Army Officer who, as a result of his partici-
pation in the inglorious episode known as ‘the Naning War’ (1830-31), had made
the acquaintance of Engku Puteri when she was living in Melaka. She was, he
said, ‘a fine, intelligent old lady’, and his version of the 1819 episode presents
her as a spirited individual who vigorously opposed the elevation of her step-
son, Abdul Rahman, to the position of Sultan. Indeed, from Begbie’s 1834 ac-
count we can infer that this was very much a battle between the royal women.
When Sultan Mahmud died in 1810, he says, there were two possible candidates
for succession: an older son, Tengku Husain, and his younger brother Tengku
Abd al-Rahman. Neither was of fully royal birth: the mother of Tengku Husain
was Encik Mariam (daughter of a female Balinese slave and a Bugis commoner),
88 Sari 21

while Tengku Abd al-Rahman’s mother. Encik Halimah, was also lowborn. Engku
Puteri, whose royal status was unquestioned, had only one child who had died
an hour after birth. In this situation, Encik Mariam and Tunku Buntit (half-sister
of Engku Puteri and Yamtuan Muda Raja Jaafar, her mother being an Inderagiri
princess), supported the candidacy of a reluctant Raja Abd al-Rahman. How-
ever, Tengku Husain had been preferred by Sultan Mahmud and was therefore
favored by Engku Puteri (Begbie 1967: 72-3, 77; Raja Ali Haji 1982: 32). Accord-
ing to Begbie, she was vocal in her opposition. ‘Who,’ she is reported to have
said, ‘elected Abdul Rahman as sovereign of Johor? Was it my brother Raja
Jaafar, or by what law of succession has it happened? It is owing to this act of
injustice that the ancient empire of Johor is fast falling to decay’ (Begbie 1967:
72-3, 77). Begbie claims that Raja Ahmad and another prince who worked closely
with the Dutch, used an unloaded pistol to persuade her and her Bugis entou-
rage to return to Riau when she attempted to leave with the Johor regalia. This
was finally taken from her by force by Dutch representatives on 13 October 1822,
making possible the installation of Sultan Abd al-Rahman as ruler of Riau-Lingga
the following year (Begbie 1967: 80-1; Hill: 1970 137; Ranzow 1827: 9).
Engku Puteri may have been outmaneuvered in the succession dispute, but
her influence in other aspects of Riau life was pervasive. For example, one syair
recounting the wedding of the son of Riau’s Chinese captain indicates that she
played an important role in the proceedings, and that part of the marriage cer-
emony was held her palace ‘according to Malay adat’ (Abu Hassan 1985: 58).
She held several islands and their revenues in apanage, and with the income
they yielded she became an important patron of literary and religious activities
(Begbie 1967: 275). Even outsiders were struck by her involvement in these
areas. Writing in 1843, a Dutch observer described her as ‘a very cultured Bugis
lady’ (Putten & Al-Azhar 1995: 158). Like her male relatives, she also sponsored
Islamic teachers, such as a Minangkabau imam born on Siantan, Abd al-Wahab
(d. 1824) who became the most important religious official on Penyengat and the
adviser of Yang Dipertuan Raja Jaafar. He translated a popular Persian tale, the
History of King Zadeh Bukhtin, into Malay with the title of Hikayat Golam
(Raja Ali Haji 1982: 221, 384; Begbie 1967: 285; Putten & Al-Azhar 1995: 62, 62,
160, 161, 164; Putten 2001: 216). Today Engku Puteri’s grave (together with those
of her father Raja Haji, her religious advisor Habib Sheikh Syakaf, her brother
Raja Jaafar and her nephew Raja Ali Haji) is still considered keramat, or super-
naturally charged (Matheson Hooker 1989: 158-9). Her formidable presence has
extended even into modern times, for new arrivals on Penyengat are said to
request her permission to take up residence, and she is purported to be willing to
assist people in times of need (Matheson Hooker 1989: 159).
It would thus be quite possible to argue that Raja Ali Haji’s personal dis-
taste for women moving into the ‘public’ realm helps explain the rather passive
depiction of Engku Puteri in the Tuhfat al-Nafis, especially when juxtaposed
with his comments on the conduct of Tengku Tengah a century earlier. One
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 89

could continue along this line of argument to contend that our reliance on such
sources may disguise the extent to which Bugis attitudes towards women of
high status were still operative in the diaspora. This argument could be further
supported if we were to consider another shadowy female presence in the Tuhfat,
that of Tengku Embong Fatimah.7
The glimpse of her childhood provided in a syair written by Encik Kamariah,
who had been nurse to Sultan Mahmud, presents Tengku Fatimah in a formula-
like manner which nonetheless hints at real capabilities. Taught by her mother,
she can soon recite the Qur’an from beginning to end (khatamlah putri asalnya
suhada). Beautiful and well-educated, she thus becomes a fitting daughter to
Sultan Mahmud and his Singapore consort, who are concerned that there are no
male heirs of fully royal blood. They begin to consider the possibility that Tengku
Fatimah might succeed.8 We can only speculate about the context for this dis-
cussion, but one wonders if their Singapore connections made them especially
sympathetic to the idea of a female ruler. We should not forget that in Britain
Victoria had come to the throne in 1837, and that under her the British Empire was
steadily expanding in power. Represented as a fairytale young queen at her
coronation, she had settled into the role of fertile matron-monarch, offering a
domestic image to match Britain’s booming productivity of the 1850s. It was not
long before Singapore leaders began to plan buildings that would honor her
name; the construction of Empress Place, for instance, began in 1864, and the
Chinese community donated a commemorative statue of the queen in 1887.
Tengku Fatimah was subsequently married to Raja Muhammad Yusuf, son
of the eighth Yamtuan Muda Raja Ali, and the wedding celebrations become a
focal point of Encik Kamariah’s syair. However, it was always an uneasy union,
and Tengku Fatimah seems to have been the dominant personality. During the
crisis following the deposition of her father Sultan Mahmud in 1857, there was
some feeling that she should provide the conduit through which the throne
would be inherited. Proponents of this view believed that Tengku Fatimah’s
husband, Raja Muhammad Yusuf, should succeed as ruler rather the other can-
didate, Raja Sulaiman (an uncle of Sultan Mahmud), the son of Sultan Abd al-
Rahman (d. 1812) and a commoner Javanese woman. The opposing faction con-
tended that the succession of a prince of the ‘Bugis dynasty’ to the sultanate
would be completely against established custom (adat istiadat).9 Their argu-
ments prevailed, and in consultation with Yamtuan Muda Raja Abdullah and his
supporters (including, of course Raja Ali Haji), the Dutch Resident agreed that
Raja Sulaiman should succeed (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 294).
The Tuhfat provides only a hint of Tengku Fatimah’s ambitions in relation to
another succession, that of Yang Dipertuan Muda. Her father-in-law, Yamtuan
Muda Raja Ali, also died in 1857, and normally his son Raja Muhammad Yusuf
would have succeeded. This was obviously the solution Tengku Fatimah pre-
ferred, since it would have given her considerable power and the year before,
when her father had still been ruler, it had apparently been decided that Raja
90 Sari 21

Muhammad Yusuf would indeed become the next Yamtuan Muda.10 The only
obstacle was that the candidate himself was unwilling to take on the office as
long as his uncle Raja Abdullah (brother of the deceased Yamtuan Muda) was
still alive. Indeed, the Tuhfat al-Nafis reports that Raja Muhammad Yusuf was
quite willing to incur Sultan Mahmud’s anger, and even risk a divorce from his
wife.11 With Sultan Mahmud falling rapidly out of favor, the battle was soon lost
and Raja Abdullah was duly installed (Raja Ali Haji 1982: 290). It was not long
before his views on the implementation of Islamic law became evident, most
notably in regard to sexual morality. According to a Dutch report of January
1858, a woman whose husband was absent had taken a young man into her
house and was discovered. Without further ado, she was declared guilty of
adultery and strangled in accordance with Malay custom. In response to Dutch
objections, Yamtuan Muda Abdullah argued that religious law lay outside colo-
nial jurisdiction.12
Following Raja Abdullah’s death in late 1858 Raja Muhammad Yusuf did
succeed as Yamtuan Muda, but his relationship with Tengku Fatimah showed
no signs of improving. It is worth noting here that despite her high status she
was not her husband’s only wife. He had earlier married an Inderagiri princess,
and subsequently took a commoner woman as a wife.13 This estrangement was
even causing concern among Tengku Fatimah’s relatives in Singapore, and in
1868 the leader of a Johor delegation visiting Riau reminded her that she should
be loyal to her husband, who was, after all a kinsman and did not wish her harm.
She replied somewhat curtly that he was making Riau into ‘a foreign country’
(dia hendak membuat negeri asing), even though he was Yamtuan Muda (Fawzi
1983: 26). What could she have meant? Could it be that Tengku Fatimah found
the restraints on her activities galling, given her strong connections to Singapore?
Did she find the kind of environment fostered by a more fundamentalist Islam
inhibiting? Did she look across the Straits and remember how much her father
had enjoyed his visits there, and contrast the Singapore environment with that
of Riau? Indeed, the evidence suggests that her memories of him were still
strong. Sultan Mahmud had died only four years earlier, and during the Johor
visit she ordered a headstone for his grave; subsequently she made a pilgrimage
to his grave in Terengganu (Fawzi 1983: 26-28). Tengku Fatimah may also have
been concerned about the influence of her father’s critics – Raja Ali Haji and
other religious scholars – over her son, Abdul Rahman, then about thirteen
years old. This influence was no small matter; Abdul Rahman was in a direct line
of succession to the throne because Sultan Sulaiman had no son. It was known,
however, that both Sultan Sulaiman and her husband preferred Tengku Daud,
son of Yamtuan Muda Abdul Rahman, a goal which was thwarted when he died
in 1882.14 In light of the years of marital discord, it is not surprising that the
couple was not buried close together; Tengku Fatimah’s grave is on Penyengat,
while that of her husband is on the island of Lingga (Matheson Hooker 1989:
161).
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 91

Available Malay sources, heavily weighted in favor of Sultan Muhammad

Yusuf, do not prepare us for the court decision following the death of Sultan
Suleiman on 17 September, 1883. On this occasion, a majority of Bugis-Malay
elite voted to install Tengku Fatimah as his successor. It is not possible to
determine precisely what motivated this decision, although a woman as head of
government would have been quite acceptable in the wider Bugis context, and
Fatimah’s right to the sultanate had been a topic of discussion for well over two
decades. Contemporary events had also shown that women could be bold and
forceful leaders. For instance, given its connections with Sulawesi, the Riau
court would have heard how the queen of Bone, Besse Kajuara, had defied the
Dutch and had refused to sign a declaration of allegiance following her succes-
sion in 1857 (Sutherland 1983: 186-93). In the Malay world, however, queens had
not ruled for about two hundred years, and although I have not been able to find
any report of the ensuing debates for and against Fatimah’s installation, one can
probably assume they were heated. Nearly a month later, on 13 October another
gathering was convened, and on this occasion Raja Abdul Rahman, now 31, was
named as the new Sultan.15 Thus, while Tengku Fatimah is accorded little atten-
tion in the Tuhfat al-Nafis and is only lightly sketched in Dutch accounts, we
must infer that her influence was considerable. Indeed, a Malay text dated to
1930 remembers her as the leading figure in the government in this transitional
period, even claiming that with the agreement of the colonial authorities she
served as regent for two years. Today, her grave on the island of Penyengat is
still venerated as a place for prayers and meditation (Matheson 1986: 11, 15, 24;
1989: 155).

PEELING OFF ANOTHER LAYER

As I indicated, it would be relatively easy, using the material provided above, to

argue that the independence said to distinguish women of Southwest Sulawesi
survived in the diaspora’s Bugis-Malay environment, although muted in the
Tuhfat al-Nafis, which was informed by Raja Ali Haji’s belief that Islamic pre-
scriptions regarding gender were a necessary component in a morally rigorous
society. In fact, this was initially the line of approach I had planned to take in this
article. As my research continued, however, I came to believe that such an
interpretation, while certainly possible, would entail a misreading of the climate
of Riau-Penyengat in the nineteenth century, and an underestimation of Raja Ali
Haji’s own views of female potentialities.
In the first place, we must be careful about equating the vision of ‘sharia-
minded’ Islam with actual practice. Earlier, I stressed the influence of Wahabi
thinking in Riau, and one can certainly track similarities that indicate develop-
ments in the Middle East were an inspiration to local leaders. Yet an examination
of Wahabism as it was lived in the early nineteenth century suggests that funda-
92 Sari 21

mentalist doctrine was not necessarily unsympathetic to the female position,

and it is worth noting that Wahabi leaders attempted to restrain the frequency
with which Arabian men divorced their wives (Burckhardt 1831: 146-71). The
same men who insisted that ‘good’ females should restrict their public move-
ments were also ready to acknowledge the contribution a capable and intelligent
woman could make to their cause. For instance, one large group of Arabs was
led by a wealthy widow named Ghálye, whose husband had been one of the
chief men in Taraba, a town some distance south of Mecca. By 1810, she had
acquired a reputation as a munificent patron, distributing money and food to ‘all
the poor of her tribe’ who consequently became loyal Wahabi followers in the
battles against the Turks. Ghálye’s hospitality to any faithful Wahabi was so
generous that her home became a meeting place for joint deliberations, in which
she also participated. Respected for her sound judgments, political acumen, and
knowledge of tribal concerns, she was able to exert considerable influence in
these male-dominated councils. According to Burckhardt (1831: 269), ‘she was
commonly regarded as the chief of the united Wahabis, attributed with super-
natural powers which rendered her Wahabi followers invincible’.
In the second place, although Riau leaders were very aware of events in the
Middle East, their society was by no means a carbon copy of that in Mecca, and
local dynamics should be taken into account in any assessment of how outside
influences were transmitted. Initially, for instance, most Malays were probably
shocked by stories of Wahabi destruction of holy tombs, and their intolerance
of veneration at saintly graves.16 Though oral tradition recalls that in Riau a
Yamtuan Muda forbade prayers at such sites, these prohibitions appear to have
had little effect. It is said that Raja Jaafar’s tomb was decorated with pillars,
domes and a pool for ablutions, which suggests prayers were offered there, and
a copula or kubbah was constructed over the grave of Engku Puteri (Matheson
Hooker 1989: 159, 171 fn 27). Ziarah or pilgrimages to holy places also continued
to be an important element in Riau’s religious and cultural life. The word ziarah
occurs five times in Raja Ahmad’s Kisah Engku Puteri, and a syair of the period
specifically mentions a pilgrimage by Sultan Mahmud and his family to the
graves of his maternal relatives in Terengganu in fulfillment of a vow.17 A similar
and largely unsuccessful attack on established customs concerned the use of
the rosary (Ar: subhah; Malay tasbih), which the Wahabis condemned as an
innovation, even though it had been in use for a considerable period. As in most
of the Islamic world, however, in Riau this criticism fell on unheeding ears, since
the tasbih was often worn by some Sufi orders as a sign of their religious
commitment (Burckhardt 1831: 115; Raja Ali Haji 1982: 288, 300; Matheson Hooker
1989: 620, 640).
As we have seen, despite the disapproving attitudes towards women who
intervened in politics, there were females on Riau who exercised considerable
influence in government. Although Raja Ali Haji was not inclined to condone
the kind of behavior that transgressed permissible bounds for women, he re-
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 93

mained intensely concerned about their role in society, since he was convinced
that contemporary values had been brought low by a prevailing ignorance, for
which study and learning were the only remedies. If the moral tone of the com-
munity was to be raised, and the high standards of the past maintained, women
as well as men should be educated. Raja Ali Haji’s attitudes towards women may
well have been influenced by his intellectual mentor, the great Sufi mystic al-
Ghazali (d. 1111). Malays had long held al-Ghazali’s name in reverence, but there
was a revival of interest in his work from the late eighteenth century, probably
attributable to the fact that his magnus opus Ihya Ulum al-Din (The Revitaliza-
tion of the Domestic Sciences) had been rendered into Malay. It is therefore
worth mentioning the comments al-Ghazali offered about a man’s relationship to
his daughters. While a son was to be preferred, one should not be dejected
when a daughter is born because she may bring unexpected blessings. ‘Many a
man who has a son wishes he did not have him, or wishes that he were a girl’.
Although the hadith transmission was weak, al-Ghazali still saw it fit to include
the saying that ‘if a man brings up his daughter well, nourishes her well, and
shares with her the gifts which God has bestowed upon him, she will bring him
fortune and will facilitate his passage from Hell to Heaven’ (Farah 1984: 97, 100,
103, 109, 113).
As far as we know, Raja Ali never wrote a tract that specifically discussed
education for women, but he is on record as affirming that the pen was ‘mightier
than ten thousands swords’ (Andaya & Matheson 1979: 127). His own belief
that a woman should ideally be able to read and understand written documents
is implicit in his discussion of human characteristics, and his instructions con-
cerning religious prohibitions. In his lengthy definition of menstruation (haid),
for instance, he reminds his readers that certain acts are proscribed during this
period, including performing the obligatory prayers, fasting, reading or touch-
ing the Qur’an and entering the mosque. If further information on this matter is
desired, he says, it can be found in the books of Islamic law (fikh) and commen-
taries (tafsir). His reason for giving so much space to this topic is simply to
enlarge the understanding of uneducated people (orang yang bodoh) (Hamzah
1996: 201-2).
One literary genre to which women were often exposed, and of which Raja
Ali Haji clearly approved, was improving stories composed in the popular syair
form and intended to be ‘sung’ before an audience (Hamzah 1996: 211-20; Putten
2001: 223-6). In his dictionary, Kitab Pengetahuan Bahasa (of which only six
letters were completed) Raja Ali Haji often employed the syair to reinforce a
specific point, as in his long section to a definition of the word bodoh, or igno-
rance (Putten 2002: 421; Matheson 1983: 19-33). In his view, ignorance could be
rectified by a willingness to learn and an application to study, and this was
relevant to all human beings, regardless of sex (Hamzah 1996: 208-13; Putten
2002: 415-30).
94 Sari 21

Heed the advice of this humble poet

To all his brothers and sisters
Ignorance is like a sin
Truly your life is useless.

In his use of rhyme, Raja Ali Haji could again turn for justification to al-
Ghazali, who had traced a reputable line of transmission to aver that the Prophet
himself had said, ‘Verily, from poetry is wisdom.’ Syair had long been popular
form of entertainment as well as religious instruction in Malay court circles, but
its moralistic dimension seems to have been strengthened in nineteenth-century
Riau, where it was common for syair to be sung to Arabic-influenced melodies.
A syair describing the preparations for the fasting month, for instance, men-
tions Arabic tunes in the style of Mecca and Medina, and refers to the court
women who, dressed in white ‘like hajis’, offered group prayers and chanted the
Qu’ran (orang tedarus) (Matheson 1983: 25; Muhammad Yusoff 1980: 52 fn 154;
Suwardi & Ridwan 1990: 150-1).
It is thus not surprising to find that Raja Ali Haji frequently turned to the
syair to explain religious instructions regarding male-female relationships, most
notably in his Syair Kitab al-Nikah (The Book of Marriage).18 Less well known
is the Syair Siti Sianah, which survives in both a manuscript and a printed form,
and which scholars now believe should also be ascribed to Raja Ali Haji rather
than to his father Raja Ahmad, as in the printed version (Mu’jizah & Maria Indra
1998: 43-5, Abu Hassan 1995: 87; Abu Hassan 1997: 19-51, 363-443). It is bound
with another of Raja Ali Haji’s work, Syair Suluh Pegawai, the contents of
which are obviously directed towards men. Syair Siti Sianah, however, is of
particular interest because not only because it has been said to reflect the influ-
ence of al-Ghazali, but because it is presented as a discussion between several
wives of religious scholars who exchange information on Islamic prescriptions
‘so that women will understand/the laws of almighty God.’(Abu Hassan 1983:
23; 1987: 253, 266) Although the names of several participants are mentioned,
namely like Siti Rubiah Halimah, Encik Jamilah and Siti Afifah, two particularly
knowledgeable women are the source of most information. The first is Siti Dianah,
who details, for instance, the ablutions required before obligatory prayers and
those that necessary at circumcision (mandi sunat) and Siti Sianah, who offers
advice on matters such as the prohibitions a woman must observe during her
menstrual periods. The exchange between the women treats other aspects of
Syariah law, including matters such as ritual prayers, fasting, the giving of alms,
and the duties of a good wife. Of particular interest is the fact that the Riau
manuscript includes a portrait of a woman accompanied by a short poem for
those who ‘have not yet seen/the appearance of Sitti Sianah.’ She and her sister
Siti Dianah, it continues, were both the wives of scholars, were well-educated,
intelligent and eloquent as well as beautiful.19
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 95

When a Johor delegation visited Riau in 1868, they commented on the

literary environment they encountered, remarking that during a visit to Raja Ali
Haji’s home ‘they read histories and accounts of Malay rajas and discussed how
things were in former times’ (Fawzi 1983: 26). It may be in the contents and
preoccupations of the literary works produced by a new generation of writers,
men and women, that we should look for resonances of the ‘Bugis heritage’ in
articulations of male-female relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. For instance, historical interest in gender during this period should be
tweaked by the fact that a number of Penyengat poems, though written by men,
took women as their central characters. One example is the Syair Sitti Zawiyyah,
composed by the imam of the Penyengat mosque, Bilal Abu (Ronkel 1921: 66). A
syair attributed to Raja Ahmad (Raja Ali Haji’s father), Kisahnya Engku Puteri,
describes his sister’s voyage to Lingga in 1831, although this still awaits more
detailed analysis.20 The world of the copyist is a shadowy one, but the new
demand for manuscripts, not least by the colonial Dutch, may have provided
some educated women with a source of income. The Syair Sitti Zawiyyah, for
instance, was copied by ‘a Malay women of Penyengat,’ and the Syair Selindung
Delima was transcribed by another Penyengat woman in April 1861 (Ronkel
1921: 66; Teuku 1999: 730). Women also purchased manuscripts, like Bilal Abu’s
daughter, Encik Wuk, who is recorded as owning a manuscript acquired by the
Dutch scholar H. C. Klinkert (Abu Hassan 1995: 64).
A glance through the catalogues makes it clear that there were more women
actively writing on Penyengat than in any other Malay court, and this itself
points to a self-assurance that may owe much to the role models provided by
individuals such as Engku Puteri and Tengku Fatimah. Sometimes the Bugis
antecedents of these writers are very evident, as in the title of a certain Daeng
Wok, who was born on Penyengat, of royal origin and died around 1851. She
was the author of the Syair Sultan Yayha, which adopts the common motif of a
woman who leaves home disguised as a man, on this occasion to search for a
lost brother (Ronkel 1921: 65; Abu Hassan 1995: 63). It is also evident that Raja
Ali Haji’s example had considerable influence on his children. His favorite son
Raja Hassan is known for his Syair Burung, a symbolic explanation of Islamic
observances such as the confession of faith, ablutions, and prayers (Abu Hassan
1983: 23; 1987: 254; Putten & Al-Azhar 1995: 273). But Raja Ali Haji’s daughters
were also known as poets. Sometime before 1859, for instance, Raja Safiah wrote
a Syair Kumbang Mengindera, still awaiting close examination.21 Her sister,
Raja Kalzum, produced the Syair Saudagar Bodoh about a rich but foolish
merchant who was ultimately saved from financial disaster by his beautiful and
pious wife Siti Zainah, whom he failed to recognize when she disguised herself
as a young khatib, an Islamic scholar.22 A Syair Sultan Mahmud composed in
the mid 1850s, written by the ruler’s nurse Encik Kamariah, describes, inter alia,
Tengku Fatimah’s marriage to Raja Muhammad Yusuf, the construction of a
royal palace, and the pilgrimage of Sultan Mahmud and his family to Terengganu
96 Sari 21

(Suwardi & Ridwan 1990: 16, 40, 65).23 Again, this syair reminds us that women
were very much part of the Islamic environment on Riau, and when Sultan
Mahmud is ill, the author relates how young women as well as men repeat ratib
from the Samaniyya tarikat to assist in his recovery.
One of the more intriguing works from the mid-nineteenth century is the
Syair Abdul Muluk, first published in 1845 in Singapore, and subsequently
appearing in a Dutch journal (Roorda 1899: 285-6). The authorship of this poem
is problematic. One the one hand, in his letter to Roorda van Eysinga Raja Ali
Haji states quite clearly that he himself put it into poetic form in contemporary
Malay (yang sudah kita sendiri menyanyikan dengan bahasa melayu johor
yang terpakai masa ini). However, the cataloguer L.W.C van den Berg appar-
ently found a note from Hermann von de Wall, who knew Raja Ali Haji well,
stating that it was actually the work of Raja Ali Haji’s sister, Raja Salihat,
although he had revised it for publication (Wieringa 1998: 97-8; Putten & Al
Azhar 1995: ll fn 2, Dissel 1899: 170). If we regard the conception of the Syair
Abdul Muluk as Raja Salehat’s, then it may take on new meaning, especially
since we know that the syair was often intended to be interpreted on different
levels (Maier & Koster 1986: 204-218). One of the principal characters, for
instance, is a princess, Sitti Rafiah, the second wife of Abdul Muluk, ruler of
Barbary. When Barbary is attacked by the ruler of Hindustan, Abdul Muluk is
defeated. He and his other consort Sitti Rahman, are taken captive and thrown
into prison. Dressed as a man, ‘lakunya seperti muda bangsawan’ and going by
the name of Sultan Duri, Sitti Rafiah goes to Hindustan where she leads a rebel-
lion and dethrones the tyrannical king, freeing her husband and his consort, her
co-wife (Sitti Syamsiar 1988/89; Winstedt 1970: 189, 192). Can this be interpreted
as a statement on the unrealized potential of ‘femaleness’? On the other hand,
what are we to make of the recurring motif whereby women achieve success only
when they disguise themselves as men?

LOOKING TO MODERNITY

Although the late nineteenth century was a time of literary transition, a number
of scholars have been intrigued by the appeal of traditional writing forms such
as the syair even as newspapers, short stories, novels, written plays were begin-
ning to appear in print. Riau’s continuing importance as a center of Muslim
scholarship and literary production is well known. In the 1890s an Islamic study
club, the Persekutuan Rusydiah, was established on Penyengat as a forum for
debate on contemporary issues, including the position of Islam in the modern
world, and as medium for disseminating relevant publications. The club was also
intended to foster writing and publication among its members, and applicants
were required to provide an example of their written work before being admitted
(Matheson 1989: 162). A founding member was the Melaka-born Syed Sheikh
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 97

Ahmad al-Hadi (1867-1934), who had been taken to Pulau Penyengat in 1874 at
the age of seven, where he had been brought up with the royal children. His
relations with the court were very close, for he was later adopted by Sultan
Abdul Rahman’s younger half-brother, Raja Ali Kelana, The latter was reluctant
to assume the position of Yamtuan Muda in 1899 and the Dutch thought this an
appropriate time to abolish the post (B. W. Andaya 1977: 126; Gordon 1999: 70).
Sheikh al-Hadi was profoundly influenced by the reformist ideas then propa-
gated in the Middle East, particularly by the Egyptian journal, al-Manar. He was
also deeply involved with al-Imam, a Malay reformist journal established in
Singapore in 1904, the editors of which were apparently conscious that women
were both readers and subscribers. It will be remembered that Sheikh al-Hadi
was the author of one of the first ‘feminist’ novels in Malay, Faridah Hanom
(Matheson Hooker 2000: 20-39), and it may have been his influence that, accord-
ing to one study, ‘led al-Imam to pay special attention to the problems facing
Muslim women in the region’ (Abu Bakar 1991: 110).
One of the major concerns for Malay and Indonesian women into the present
day has been polygamy. In religious teachings, a woman should accept the
position of co-wife with equanimity as long as her husband treats each spouse
equally. It may thus be no coincidence that the heroine of Syair Abdul Muluk is
loyal not only to her husband, the ruler, but also to his other consort. Nonethe-
less, the editors of al-Imam had reservations regarding the advisability of this
practice. In 1907, one columnist, Haji Muhammad Tahir bin Haji Ahmad, ex-
pressed his doubts about a man taking more than one wife because, he said, it
would undermine the family since the wives were likely to quarrel and dispute
their share of the husband’s wealth (Abu Bakar 1991: 110). He assured his read-
ers that he had personally witnessed these kinds of situations, and had seen the
harmful consequences of polygamy. In his opinion, relations between husbands
and wives would benefit from greater oversight from the ulama in cases of
marital breakdown. Further, he advocated the formulation of new laws that would
recognize women’s rights, protect married women and their children, regulate
and control polygamy and foster female self-awareness. Yet in the opinion of al-
Imam, the education of women should occur within a Muslim rather than a
Western framework. Later the same year, another contributor, though expressing
guarded support for female schooling, was nonetheless concerned at the West-
ernization of ‘daughters of our nobles’ who were sometimes even seen in motor
cars. In the view of this writer, the ultimate aim of female education should be to
support the family, and girls should not be accorded the same freedoms as boys
because this would undermine their essential ‘femaleness’ and could even lead
to a decline in birth rate. Western women, he argued, felt that being house-
bound was tantamount to a prison sentence, and they therefore avoided moth-
erhood, even taking pills to abort their pregnancies. Some were content to re-
frain from marrying despite advancing years. Indeed, a lesson could be drawn
from France, where the population had begun to rise when the government
98 Sari 21

reversed ‘modern’ changes introduced into the curriculum for female students.
Fundamentally, the article contended, women should be guided by the teach-
ings of the holy Qur’an. ‘And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be
modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to
draw their veils over their bosoms…. And turn under Allah altogether, O believ-
ers, in order that ye may succeed’ (Abu Bakar 1991: 112-4).
To some extent, women’s writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century reflects these influences, but without further research we can only catch
glimpses of how local authors understood reformist ideas about marriage and
the female position generally. The dearth of information is itself frustrating. All
we know of a certain Raja Anisah binti Raja Muhammad Tahir (grandniece of
Raja Ali Haji, and granddaughter of Yamtuan Raja Abdullah), for instance, is that
she owned a work on tauhid (the doctrine of unity) written in both Arabic and
Malay and dated 1896 (AH 1314).24 The name of Raja Fatimah, a daughter of Raji
Haji Abdullah (grandson of Raja Ali Haji) has come down to us only because
she is listed as the owner of another poem, the Syair Pahlawan Farhad (Mu’jizah
& Rukmi 1998: 99). It does appear, however, as though the pursuits of a number
of women were undertaken in conjunction with their husbands. Raja Haji Ahmad
(grandson of Raja Ali Haji, son of Raja Hasan, brother of Raja Khalid Hitam and
Raja Haji Abdullah) was noted as a tabib, a physician as well as a writer. His wife
Haji Maimunah did not compose any works, as far as we know, but like her
husband she was skilled in traditional healing, and was also a specialist on
Islamic astronomy (ilmu falak). The value Raja Haji Ahmad placed on partner-
ship in marriage is evident in the syair he composed for his own son’s marriage
in 1926, celebrating a union which grew out of mutual compatibility, rather than
being purely a product of parental negotiation.25
While it has been established that several wives of Rushdiyah Club mem-
bers emulated their menfolk and also became writers, a number of questions
remain unanswered. Did they attend the meetings when their husbands debated
contemporary issues? Were they intrigued by the fact that queens ruled in both
Britain and the Netherlands, which together governed virtually the entire Malay-
Indonesian archipelago?26 How much can we infer about their mental world from
the works that have survived? We would be safe in assuming that motherhood
remained a prime source of Malay female status, but what is the significance of
a picture stuck into a manuscript dated 1902 (AH 1320) that shows a European
woman caring for her child and preparing him for sleep? The inclusion of these
illustrations of Caucasians is strangely reminiscent of those included in Faridah
Hanum, which are perhaps photographs of Egyptian film stars (Mu’jizah &
Rukmi 1998: 38-9; Matheson Hooker 2000: 21, 399 fn 17) Other texts suggest that
traditional ‘female’ matters, such as pleasing a husband, continued to concern
the wives of Rushdiyah Club members. For instance, a Penyengat woman of
commoner origins, Khatijah Terong (1885?-1955?) became the fourth wife of Raja
Haji Abdullah (grandson of Raja Ali Haji and brother of Raja Haji Ahmad and
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 99

Raja Khalid Hitam) who was intimately involved in attempts to obtain Turkish
and Japanese help following the Dutch abolition of the Riau sultanate in 1911
(Mu’jizah & Rukmi 1998: 18; Hamidy 1985: 70; Ding 2002: 19-54; Mukherjee 1997:
29-46). Known for her mastery of ‘white magic’, Khatijah Terung was quite
possibly encouraged to record her knowledge by her husband, himself a prolific
writer with an interest in the occult, and by the Bugis-descended women who
were now her relatives. The resulting manuscript, Perhimpunan Gunawan bagi
Laki-Laki dan Perempuan (A Compendium of Charms for Men and Women),
dated 1329 AH (1911), comprised a list of charms by which women could protect
their absent husbands, and other ‘special secrets’ that would heighten sexual
pleasure and ensure marital fidelity (Raja Hamzah 1987: 2-3; B. W. Andaya 1977:
148-50; Ding 1999). Salamah binti Ambar, also from Penyengat and married to
Raja Abdul Mutalib, wrote a Syair Nilam Permata which contains advice on
keeping one’s body pure.27 Linked to the Penyengat group was another woman,
Badriah Muhammad Thaher, who translated an Arab book of etiquette for young
females that was published by Mathba’at al Ahmadiah in Singapore in 1925
(Raja Hamzah 1987: 3; Hamidy 1985: 72).
Concerns with virginity, marital fidelity and maternal beneficence were noth-
ing new in Malay writing. However, in terms of gender there were other influ-
ences at work, most evident in al-Hadi’s Faridah Hanom, published in 1925-26
(Matheson Hooker 2000: 20). Set in Cairo in 1894, the heroine of this ‘realistic’
novel is at once a loyal lover, a devoted patriot, a dutiful daughter, a committed
Muslim and an advocate of women’s rights. Although al-Hadi had by this time
moved to Penang, he would have still been remembered by his relatives on Riau.
As we have noted, one of the Riau princes most closely associated with al-Hadi
and the anti-colonial initiatives on Riau was Raja Khalid Hitam bin Raja Hassan
bin Raja Ali Haji (Gordon 1999: 276). Raja Hitam (himself the author of at least
two works). The books are given as the Kisah Perjalanan Sultan Lingga ke
Johor and Thamaratul Matlub Fi Anuari Qulub (Raja Hamzah 1987: 5). He had
married his cousin Raja Aisyah, daughter of Raja Sulaiman ibn Raja Ali Haji, who
was thus in a direct line of descent from the Bugis migrants of the early eigh-
teenth century. It seems evident that Raja Aisyah had listened closely to the
opinions of al-Hadi and his reformist group and it is to her writing that we will
now turn.

RAJA AISYAH SULAIMAN

Raja Aisyah was born on Penyengat around 1870, where she spent most of her
early life. Although little is known of her early experiences, she apparently be-
gan writing when she was in her teenage years, completing her first work,
Mulkhatul Badrul Mukmin or Hikayat Syamsul Anwar, in 1890.28 Her marriage
to Raja Khalid Hitam not only made her a sister-in-law of both Khatijah Terung
100 Sari 21

and the tabib Haji Maimunah, but also brought her into the heart of Riau’s
literary circle. Her visits to Singapore meant she would have been well aware of
the seductively secular environment that had aroused the concerns of al-Imam;
indeed, her husband had written a syair about a Penyengat visit there in 1893, in
which he described sights quite unknown in Riau, such as the Botanical Gar-
dens, the zoo, a photography studio, Robinson’s department store (Abu Hassan
1995: 58-9). It is perhaps not surprising that following the deposition of Sultan
Abdul Rahman in 1911, Raja Aisyah and Raja Hitam chose Singapore as their
place of self-exile. There, Raja Aisyah is said to have lived a secluded life,
wearing full jubah and jilbab in public. We know that they went together to
Japan in 1913, and that Raja Aisyah accompanied Raja Hitam’s body back to
Riau following his death in Tokyo the following year. Childless, and now a
widow, she apparently devoted much of her time to study, and is remembered by
friends and acquaintances as an avid reader and writer. She eventually took up
residence in Johor Baru, dying around 1925 (Ding 1994: 40-1; 1992: 92, 98; B. W.
Andaya 1997: 153-4).
A recent study of Raja Aisyah by Ding Choo Ming has drawn our attention
to the theme of female learning that threads through her earliest work, Hikayat
Syamsul Anwar. In his analysis, Ding (1999: 104) argues that the figure of Badrul
Muin (who like so many other heroines, disguises herself as a man, Afandi
Hakim) projects Raja Aisyah’s own attitudes towards educated women and the
belief that they have the capacity to achieve on the same level as men. The text
describes the world in which Badrul Muin is raised as heavy with hikayat,
pantun, syair, but depicts her as a woman for whom literature was not merely
entertainment, but a source of mental stimulation and religious solace, an area
where it appeared she and her husband could become true partners (Ding 1999:
98, 102). One episode, for example, describes Syamsul Anwar’s pleasure in his
wife’s intelligence and his delight in her ability to write. ‘His happiness in-
creased when he saw his wife’s fingers holding a pen, so sweet was her appear-
ance that he was overwhelmed by a passionate love for her’ (Ding 1999: 91).
Through the text we are repeatedly shown how she and her husband are drawn
together through their love of study and reading ‘and then she recited several
beautiful hikayat with Syamsul Anwar, which helped relieve their sadness and
freed them from worry’. But her husband’s love is not given unconditionally,
and Badrul Muin rejects her marriage because of the constraints that even a
loving husband can place upon a wife. By inference this expression of her own
individuality and her love of learning go hand in hand. At one point Badrul Muin
refuses to leave her room except for prayers, and without eating or drinking
devotes herself to study. The books she reads include, as one might expect,
religious and improving material like a Kitab al-Adab and the Kitab Washul
Muluki (Ding 1999: 98, 104). Indeed, Badrul Muin even becomes a religious
teacher in her own right. The study sessions in which she participated ‘began at
eight o’clock in the morning and continued until nine o’clock; this time was
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 101

fixed’. Does this, Ding (1999: 99) asks, reflect the disciplined religious life of
Penyengat in which Raja Aisyah grew up?
Of Raja Aisyah’s writing during her married life we have no knowledge.
Three works attributed to her have been dated to the years following the death
of Raja Hitam, including Syair Seligi Tajam Bertimbal (published in 1929) and
Hikayat Syariful Akhtar (the first volume of which was also published in 1929).29
Syair Seligi Tajam Bertimbal was possibly written in collaboration with another
woman, the teacher and later UMNO leader Ibu Zain (1903-81), and it has been
described as a didactic work providing guidance for family life.30 However, it is
the third piece, a long poem entitled Syair Khadamuddin, published posthu-
mously in 1345 AH (1926) by Singapore’s Mathba’at al Ahmadiah press, that has
attracted most scholarly attention (Hamidy 1985: 69). This is because Syair
Khadamuddin with its heroine Sabariah is thought to be semi-autobiographical,
representing the first such work known to have been written by a woman. One
must be careful not to overstate the point, but there is some justification in
seeing Sabariah’s grief over the death of her husband at the hands of pirates as
a metaphor for Raja Aisyah’s own emotions when her husband died in a foreign
land (Ding 1999: 93; Raja Hamzah 1987: 13-4). Ding (1999: 93-4) suggests that as
a widow Sabariah’s effort to resist the advances of well-born men found a paral-
lel in Raja Aisyah’s own life, and that her yearning to return to her own country
might reflect the author’s longing for her childhood home on Penyengat (Raja
Hamzah 1987: 8, 71-2). Be that as it may, it is probably fair to see Raja Aisyah as
standing at the threshold of a new era in female writing. Like her male cohort, she
was willing to put her name to a text, and while drawing on traditional themes and
motifs the world of which she wrote extended far beyond the court. It is signifi-
cant that she found the opportunity to employ contemporary language, using
words like ‘watan’, which had emerged in the 1920s as a new term for homeland
(tanah air) (Milner 1994: 105; Raja Hamzah 1987: 9). At this stage of research it
is impossible to ascertain the extent to which she was personally influenced by
the reformist Islam reaching Malay society through individuals like Sheikh al-
Hadi and publications such as al-Imam. It does not appear, however, that she
saw any conflict between the assertion of individual aspirations and Muslim
piety. Above all, she held firmly to the view that writing should guide and edify
its readers, for it was not good ‘to narrate things that have no benefit’ (Ding
1999: 114). From a feminist perspective, one can perhaps see some significance
in the fact that Raja Aiysah, by this time middle aged, saw no need to disguise
Sabariah as a man. In this context, Raja Aisyah’s declamation ‘Kami ini seorang
merdeka’ is surely a statement that came from her own (female) heart (Ding 1999:
106-28; Raja Hamzah 1987: 58).
102 Sari 21

CONCLUSION

This article has covered considerable ground. The initial inquiry rose from ques-
tions concerning the survival of ‘Bugis’ values in the diaspora, and the ways
these may have been reflected in the position of women. In the early nineteenth
century Engku Puteri could still be identified as a ‘Bugis lady’, but a hundred
years later there is no indication that Raja Aisyah, Raja Ali Haji’s granddaughter,
felt herself to be anything other than Malay. The questions generated by her
writing do not relate to matters of ethnicity, but to the position of women in a
changing world, and the extent to which they could be the intellectual equal of
men. Nonetheless, the lines of transmission are not faint ones. The literary
environment on Penyengat owed much to scholars such as Raja Ahmad and his
son Raja Ali Haji, but the patronage of Engku Puteri was also a major element in
its success. On Penyengat, women were not merely the audiences for literary
performance, but also creative writers, and the example of certain powerful women
like Tengku Fatimah could provide persuasive role models. Nor should we
assume that the concerns of these women were necessarily the same as those of
men. Issues of nationalism were at the forefront of male thinking in the early
twentieth century, but across Asia educated females were asking whether the
promise of greater political rights for men would be translated into a closer
partnership with women (B. W. Andaya 2001: 1-30). It is indeed a long way from
Syair Abdul Muluk to Syair Kadamuddin, and Raja Salihat and her grandniece
Raja Aisyah were very different women. I would nonetheless like to end this
article by suggesting that behind them both it might still be possible to detect
the shadowy presence of their distant Bugis antecedents, individuals like the
queen Daeng Telele and the former slave To Ayo.

NOTES

1
Barbara Watson Andaya, Perak, The Abode of Grace: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century
Malay State (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 293-94. In 1766 Sultan
Salehuddin had been installed as ruler in a Malay-style ceremony, thus publicly
announcing his independence from Riau, the Bugis power-center in the Malay world.
2
Raja Ali Haji, Tuhfat al-Nafis, p. 53, 54; ‘Maklumlah sahaja akal orang-orang perempuan
apabila ia sudah marah atau benci, memperbuatlah ia akan pekerjaan yang tiada patut,
dan tiada memikirkan awal akhir di belakang kali’. Matheson Hooker, Tuhfat al-Nafis, p.
196, 198.
3
For details on how a Bugis acquired sole rights to the institutionalized position of Yang
Dipertuan Muda (Yamtuan Muda), in contradistinction to the ‘Malay’ Sultan, see
Leonard Y. Andaya, The Kingdom of Johor 1641-1728: Economic and Political Deve-
lopments (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975).
4
I have not myself found any mention of this in Malay or Dutch sources.
5
The date of Raja Ali’s death, 1805 is not given in the Tuhfat. Raja Ali Haji, Tuhfat al-
Nafis, p. 215, 383.
Gender, Islam and the Bugis Diaspora in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century 103

6
Raja Ali Haji, Tuhfat al-Nafis, p. 279. ‘Maka dikuburkan oleh paduka anakanda sekalian
di dalam kotanya, diperbuatnya satu kubah demikian halnya’. Hooker, Tuhfat al-Nafis,
p. 604.
7
Raja Maimunah was the granddaughter of both the ‘Bugis’ Temenggong of Singapore
Abd-al Rahman and of the ‘Malay’ Sultan Husain of Singapore, installed 1819.
Temenggong Ibrahim of Johor ws her uncle, and Temenggong (later Sultan) Abu Bakar
(1861-95) her first cousin.
8
Adapun akan paduka adinda/Bunda suruhan kepada anakda/Putraku ganti paduka
ayahanda/Memohon memiliharakan barang yang ada. Suwardi and Ridwan, Syair Sultan
Mahmud, p. 43.
9
Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague (hence ARA) Mailrapport 3/31 58, no. 32 L. A. V. 9
Feb. 1858, N145/2.; Res. To Batavia 4 Dec. 1858.
10
ARA Mailrapport 3/31 58, no. 32 L. A. V. 9 Feb. 1858, N145/2.; Res. To Batavia 4 Dec.
1858.
11
Raja Ali Haji, Tuhfat al-Nafis, p. 290; A version of the Tuhfat, owned by another
Tengku Fatimah, daughter of Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor, emphasizes that the divorce
did not take place. Matheson Hooker, Tuhfat al-Nafis, pp. 100, 622, 715.
12
ARA Ministry of Colonies, 30 Jan. 1858 No. 3/110, Resident of Riau to Batavia 8 Nov.
1857.
13
Suwardi & Ridwan. (1990): 54: Her name was Si Noer; she was the mother of Raja Ali
Kelana, who refused to accept the position of Yamtuan Muda in 1899. ARA V. 20 Feb.
1901, W. 38 (Mailreport 1819, 717), Resident of Riau to Batavia, 18 June 1899.
14
Koninklijk Instituut, Leiden. Handschrift 420, ‘Memorie van overgaaf van den
aftredenden Resident van Riouw E. Netscher aan zijnen opvolger D.W. Schiff’, fo. 21.
15
ARA Mailrapport, Geheim 1940: Resident of Riau to Governor General, 17 Dec. 1883.
Initially, some nobles had pressed for Yamtuan Muda Muhammad Yusuf to become
Sultan.
16
Bugis and Makassar diaries recording eyewitness accounts of these events had been
translated into Malay. Ricklefs and Voorhoeve, Indonesian Manuscripts in Great
Britain, p. 109.
17
‘Karena beta di dalam dada/Hendak ziarah ke makam ayahanda/ Demikianlah niat permai
yang suhada/Niat membawa kan anakda’. Suwardi and Ridwan, Syair Sultan Mahmud,
p. 119.
18
This syair is a primary concern of Abu Hassan, Syair-Syair Melayu Riau.
19
Keduanya itu isteri pendita/ ilmunya banyak sudahlah nyata/ bijak bistari petah perkata/
Parasnya elok mengerna danta. Abu Hassan, Syair-syair Melayu Riau, p. 86.
20
Raja Ali Haji, Tuhfat al-Nafis, p. 258. This poem is Cod. Or. 1761 in Leiden University
Library. See H. H. Juynboll. Catalogue van de Maleische en Sundaneesche Handschriften
der Leidsche. Universiteits Bibliotheek. (Leiden: Brill, 1855). See p. 17-18. Typed
transcriptions have been made independently by Jan van der Putten and Ian Proudfoot.
21
Jan van der Putten has prepared a typescript of this syair (KL. 190 in Leiden Univer-
sity Library) for the Malay Concordance project. Ph.S. van Ronkel, Supplement-
Catalogus der Maleische en Minangkabausche Handschriften in de Leidsche
Universiteits-Bibliotheek, Leiden: Brill, 1921), p. 93-94.
22
This is Kl. 164, University of Leiden Library. Ph.S. van Ronkel, Supplement- Catalogus
der Maleische en Minangkabaushe Handschriften in de Leidsche Universiteits-Biblioteek,
Leiden: Brill, 1921), pp. 72-73; Abu Hassan, Syair-syair Melayu Riau, p. 67. A
104 Sari 21

romanization of this text is in A. A. Fokker, Maleisch leesboek bevattende proza-

stukken en een volledig verhalend gedicht (Sair [Saudagar Bodoh]) (Zutphen: W. J.
Thieme, 1903). A more recent romanization is by Jan van der Putten for the Malay
Concordance Project, although this is as yet unpublished. For further discussion, see
Edwin P. Wieringa, ‘The Theme of the Woman who Set out to Free her Husband in the
Malay Syair Saudagar Bodoh (ca. 1861), by Raja Kalzum,’ Review of Indonesian and
Malay Affairs 31, 2 (December 1997): 11-28.
23
Suwardi and Ridwan, Syair Sultan Mahmud, p. 16, 40, 65. This is a copy of Kl 138 in
Leiden University Library.
24
Mu’jizah and Rukmi, Penelusuran Penyalinan Naskah-naskah Riau, p. 32, 99. Raja
Anisah had obtained this from another owner.
25
Aisyah Syair Khadamuddin, p. 3 (Notes by Hamzah Yunus). For a list of syair written
by Raja Haji Ahmad Tabib, see Abu Hassan, Syair-Syair Melayu Riau, p. 49 fn. 73 and
Lampiran E. I am grateful to Ding Choo Ming for sending me a copy of his paper, ‘Raja
Haji Ahmad bin Raja Hassan dengan karyanya “Perkahwinan Raja Muhammad Yusuf
dengan Raja Zaleha”,’ presented at an international symposium in Bandung, December
2002. This contains a transliteration of the syair.
26
When Willem III of the Netherlands died in 1890, his daughter Wilhelmina was only ten
years old. Her mother, Queen Emma, reigned as regent until 1898, when Wilhelmina
reached the age of eighteen and was installed as ruler.
27
Mu’jizah and Rukmi, Penelusuran Penyalinan Naskah-naskah Riau, p. 41, 93. The
manuscript is dated 1327 AH (1909) Hamidy et al., Naskah Kuno, p. 71. It has also
been termed Syair Nasihat untuk Penjagaan Anggota Tubuh. Ding, Raja Aisyah, p. 103.
Its contents may be similar to the advice given by Raja Ali Haji in Syair Siti Sianah
regarding a Muslim woman’s responsibility to guard what she sees with her eyes, what
she hears with her ears, what she says with her tongue, where she goes with her legs and
so forth. Abu Hassan, Syair-Syair Melayu Riau, p. 85. See his Lampiran E for a listing
of works by Raja Abdullah and Raja Khalid Hitam.
28
No original manuscript survives of this work, although there are five handwritten
copies. Ding Choo Ming, Raja Aisyah Sulaiman. Pengarang Ulung Wanita Melayu
(Bangi: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1999), p. 96.
29
Ding, Raja Aisyah, p. 88-89. Ding Choo Ming informs me that the complete handwrit-
ten manuscript of Hikayat Syariful Akhtar is in the Museum Kuala Terengganu. Per-
sonal Communication, May 19 2003.
30
Ding informs me that the Jawi text of Syair Seligi Tajam Bertimbal is available at http:/
/www.malaycivilization.com/main.asp, although I have not yet been able to examine it.

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Barbara Watson Andaya

Professor, Asian Studies Program
University of Hawai’i
Moore Hall 416
1890 East-West Road
Honolulu, HI 96822
United States of America
e-mail: bandaya@hawaii.edu.

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